As to the facts, it seems to me that people on all sides can and do quote facts. There are many many facts in the world. What we need is some reasonable approximation to the truth, which is a hard thing to come by. I fail to see how excluding the government voice would help that. Imagine if the press decided never to interview or cover speeches by the Brittish government, for example, citing as a reason that the British government is biased in favour of the British Government, and therefore biased and unreliable. This kind of approach seems irrational.

EggbertEinstein wrote:Rachel Maddow does not strike me as being left wing at all. She seems like an establisment neoliberal. But then again I dont know much about her. I am not very interested in MSNBC.

If you go by terminology and not content you might say Neoliberals and left wing are different but really when you look at Communism and Socialism and look at neoliberals you will see the exact same thing with different terminologies. In Communism the 1% is represented by the Government, in Neoliberalism the 1% is represented by Corporations. For example, Venezuela is out of food thanks to the Communist Government that controls food distribution by controlling the seeds and grains market. During 2015/2016 Obama Administration put under the rug and neoliberal press barely mentioned a series of mega fusions that happened.

In 2015 Down and Dupont merged in a deal of 166 billions of dollars. Syngenta was bought by Chine Chemicals and Buyer bought Monsanto. That means over 80% of the seeds, grains and pesticide market in USA belongs to a single company. They control everything 80% of America eat. You might think what about cattle, fruits and vegetables? Well, Monsanto-Bayer controls 85% of the corn market and USA's cattle is corn fed. Than we have fruits and vegetables and guess who controls the fertilizant and pesticide market?

Neoliberalism and hard core Socialism are very similar if you substitute the terminology of Big State for Big Corporations. Depending on the size of the operations, like the merge of Down and Dupont, you might go as far as say they substituted the State, in another words, is a modern day Communism.

Neoliberalism is based on cultural Marxism, and we all know the School of Frankfurt took note of everything Lenin and Hitler did right and wrong and created their own version of modern day State commanded by the media, infiltrating schools and Universities.

The media or Universities don't control your thoughts like predicted in 1984, they control what you talk about, what you will read, what you will value.

Politiks wrote:Neoliberalism and hard core Socialism are very similar if you substitute the terminology of Big State for Big Corporations.

Well the difference between the state and big corporations is not a semantic one, it is a large substantive one. You are basically saying two things are the same if we close our eyes to all the differences.

Most left-wing ideologies, as far as I know, promote local democracy. Many of the so called socialist or communist nations have not implemented this much. I suspect this is a reaction to constant sabotage from outside. Indeed it could be a motivation for the sabotage. If you can provoke them to become overly centralised then things start to go wrong and you can point to that as evidence of being antidemocratic and all the rest of it.

Politiks wrote:Neoliberalism is based on cultural Marxism, and we all know the School of Frankfurt took note of everything Lenin and Hitler did right and wrong and created their own version of modern day State commanded by the media, infiltrating schools and Universities.

I am not sure we do all know that. The Frankfurt School and so-called "cultural Marxism"seems to be mainly an obsession of right wing propagandists on the internet.

EggbertEinstein wrote:Well the difference between the state and big corporations is not a semantic one, it is a large substantive one. You are basically saying two things are the same if we close our eyes to all the differences.

Most left-wing ideologies, as far as I know, promote local democracy. Many of the so called socialist or communist nations have not implemented this much. I suspect this is a reaction to constant sabotage from outside. Indeed it could be a motivation for the sabotage. If you can provoke them to become overly centralised then things start to go wrong and you can point to that as evidence of being antidemocratic and all the rest of it.

I am not sure we do all know that. The Frankfurt School and so-called "cultural Marxism"seems to be mainly an obsession of right wing propagandists on the internet.

I don't understand your reasoning. The Democratic Party, in the US, itself admits their ignoring the importance of local elections. They absolutely promote a centralized government heavy on Socialism. The only real difference is they also support big banks.

I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.

Honestly, I'm not at all convinced it would have been any better with the Democrats in charge. Labour - which even under Blair was further left than the Democrats - was in power in the UK, and that didn't stop our banks from blowing up.

Of course, to say that it is only the Democrats who are close with big banks - when Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin are currently senior advisers to Trump - is stupid. And to claim that the the Democrats are somehow teaming up with major investment banks to institute socialism (?) is so incoherent as to be actually laughable.

Zagadka wrote:Yea, the collapse in 2008 was totally the Democrats' fault.

I did not mean to indicate that. I only meant Socialism in the US is guided by the interests of the Oligarchy.Both parties are complicit in this deceit, but the Democratic Party claims to represent the interests of underclasses. Both parties want the underclasses to be compliant. They will only be given the minimum to keep them subservient. The role the Democrats play in this deceit is one of hypocrisy to The underclass, while Republicans play the role of hypocrisy to the working class.

I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.

Or one degree, there is no conspiracy and everyone's just doing what they believe in and screwing it up for human reasons. Not everything is a dark smokey room type conspiracy.

@Heisenberg

I do think the Democrats have a better attitude towards sound banking regulation, but the problem was systemic and rather arcane. Which makes it hard to deal with even when you have political control. So it would've been hard to deal with regardless.

What we really need is to create policy proposal groups with economists and other experts in the industry to craft something to go to congress. The same for other really complex issues that legislators would have a hard time creating policy for.

Banking regulations get way too caught up in ideological battles though so I'm cynical about us ever having truly effective regulations.

My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.

Or one degree, there is no conspiracy and everyone's just doing what they believe in and screwing it up for human reasons. Not everything is a dark smokey room type conspiracy.

I caught that. You may be right, but I am afraid that is overly optimistic. Life has taught me things are normally worse than even pessimists believe. The vast majority are pursuing what they think is right, but they let someone else tell them what that is.

I dream of the United Citystates of Earth, where each Citystate has a standardized border such as one whole degree of Latitude by one whole degree of Longitude.

EggbertEinstein wrote:Rachel Maddow does not strike me as being left wing at all. She seems like an establisment neoliberal. But then again I dont know much about her. I am not very interested in MSNBC.

Establishment neoliberal is the correct way to describe her. Annoying-as-all-fuck works too.

Martin on the other hand, is a decent and principled journalist who risks her life to report from dangerous countries, like Venezuela and Palestine in the last year alone.

An unhinged zionist said "Israel is Apartheid racist state" and that made me laugh a lot.

One Degree wrote:I don't understand your reasoning. The Democratic Party, in the US, itself admits their ignoring the importance of local elections. They absolutely promote a centralized government heavy on Socialism. The only real difference is they also support big banks.

I have no doubt you are right about the Dems, except perhaps I would call their big government tendency stateist or something, rather than socialist.

I would regard the Democratic party to be by and large a fake-left party which is really a centre-right party. When I said above "Most left-wing ideologies, as far as I know, promote local democracy" I certainly didn´t have the Democrat party in the USA in mind.